Lake Street Dive is comfortable playing in dive bars – hence the origin of the band’s name – but drummer Mike Calabrese said the foursome that began in Boston a dozen years ago is excited to kick off Vermont’s summer-concert season Memorial Day weekend at the Shelburne Museum.

“There’s a charm to the clubs,” Calabrese said by phone this month from his home in Boston, “but it’s nice to get people out in the sunshine and dancing.”

Friday’s concert is the first of a long tour for Lake Street Dive. The band known for its jazzy pop vibe and the captivating vocals of Rachael Price begins its trek in Shelburne before touring the United States through June. The group starts up again in August and travels America through Labor Day weekend. That second leg includes an Aug. 19 gig opening for Vermont native Grace Potter at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.

Lake Street Dive is ready to get rolling on its latest tour, according to Calabrese. “It’ll be a new setting, and that always carries with it some sort of excitement,” he said. “We’ve been on a permanent tour basically since 2012. It’s more or less like a continuation.”

It helps that this summer’s tour starts in Vermont. “It’s going to be a good, easy entry into the tour because Vermont always gives it right back,” according to Calabrese. “It sort of puts other audiences to shame. They’re just excited before you even play a note.”

Calabrese remembers when the band performed at Potter’s Grand Point North festival at Waterfront Park in Burlington in September of 2014. It was a rainy, chilly afternoon, and Calabrese recalls blowing on his hands to keep them warm before the band’s set. The crowd was into it from the get-go – “undeterred and indefatigable,” he said.

“That’s what you want to see,” according to Calabrese. “When faced with adversity, how do you behave? That was a great test of the concert-goers’ character.”

A lot of that focus on the band is directed toward Price, the singer who makes the heads of festival-attendees swivel as they race to check out where that powerful voice is coming from. “Rachael has much more than a great voice. She has a great presence on stage,” Calabrese said. “If the rest of the band is doing their jobs right she is just conveying what we are doing out of her mouth into people’s faces and shaking rumps.”

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Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive sings during the Grand Point North music festival on Saturday September 13, 2014 on the waterfront in Burlington.(Photo: BRIAN JENKINS/FREE PRESS FILE)

Though Price gets the bulk of the attention, Calabrese said he and band mates Mike “McDuck” Olson and Bridget Kearney feel no slight. “Every member of the band gets their fair share of praise,” the drummer said. “We’re selling CDs after the show and people say they appreciate us.”

The growth of Lake Street Dive’s popularity can be seen in the size of the venues the band has played in Vermont in recent years. They’re gone from the Higher Ground Ballroom to a supporting role at Grand Point North to a headlining gig for a couple thousand fans Friday at the Shelburne Museum.

Calabrese apologized for his answer to the question, “How big do you want the band to get?”

“It’s kind of a copout,” he said of his response. “As big as possible without sacrificing any of our choices and desires for creativity. If somebody said, ‘You could be the biggest thing ever but need to wear silly hats and add mellotron played by a guy named Jim,’ we’d probably say, ‘No, no thank you.’” (He did say they’d “probably” say no, leaving that creative option open.)

“The formula we have developed over the last 12 years has worked for us so far,” Calabrese said. “If we’re not happy doing it, there’s no point to do it.”